Thomas Cook says demand visible in South East Asia, Oz

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26 Aug, 2025 12:21

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The outlook for festive season is picking up and is looking good, says Madhavan Menon, MD of Thomas Cook. This is after the company witnessed two quarters of drop in demand due to terrorist attacks in Europe. “Over the last year, we are seeing 12 percent growth in forward-booking into the festive season and December,” Menon says. Demand is visible in South East Asian countries and Australia. The demand for long weekends in short-haul packages has also risen, which is a complete new trend for Thomas Cook. Destinations like Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Mauritius and Sri Lanka are popular for long weekends. The company is also working on its backend synergies to save cost with its acquisition of Kuoni. Below is the verbatim transcript of Madhavan Menon’s interview with Latha Venkatesh, Sonia Shenoy and Anuj Singhal on CNBC-TV18.Sonia: Tell us what the outlook is for the next couple of months during the festive season, how is the pre-festive demand shaping up so far? A: I think the outlook for the festive season has been picking up and it is looking good. This is after having had a drop in demand during the first two quarters on the back of the terrorist issues that Europe has had. However, we are seeing a lot of demand into South East Asia and Australia. On the long haul, Australia is showing a lot of demand. We are beginning to see people wanting to go to China too. As far as the short haul is concerned, we are seeing two factors moving. One is within India and this weekend demand has always existed but we are beginning to see it mature even further with new destinations being sought. In addition to this, we are also seeing demand over longer weekends into destinations like Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Dubai, even Mauritius and that is a new trend that we have been witnessing with people looking for three nights, four nights breaks in these destinations. So, overall it is looking much better than it did in the first two quarters. Latha: It would be good if you could put some numbers into how the second half looks vis-à-vis the second half last year. However, besides that number, I wanted to know about your various acquisitions, you acquired Luxe Asia in Sri Lanka, Kuoni – of course the overall the India-Hong Kong operations and Sterling Holidays’s Nature Trails, are all these making money for you and if yes how much? A: Let me address each of those questions. First of all in terms of the outlook, in terms of growth over last year, we are seeing about a 12 percent growth in forward bookings into the festive season and December which is a good trend. So, that is one thing. In terms of the acquisitions that we have made, let me talk Kuoni which is the major acquisition that we made last year. We are right now focusing on the synergies on the back end. We have brought in Accenture to undertake a study whereby we can integrate our back ends and this will result in significant cost savings for us. So, that activity is going on right now. In terms of Luxe Asia which is the Sri Lankan company that we acquired to bring tourists into Sri Lanka, while I don’t say that the timing is perfect, in reality Sri Lanka has been declared as the fastest growing destination in terms of tourism in Asia and that has been very heartening to us because we have actually seen an increase in traffic flowing into that company. Of course part of it is also contributed to the fact that the India sourced business be it in India or be it from overseas has resulted in growth and we have seen, for example from India, we have seen about a 40 percent growth in numbers.As far as business coming in from our overseas agents, that is the first year so very honestly I don’t think you can -- it is a realistic number because it will seem exaggerated. However, my expectation is that all these businesses will show various benefits to us as we improvise. Anuj: You unlocked quite a bit of value with Quess Corp's IPO so are there plans for some of the other units IPOs as well and secondly your holding in Quess Corp of course is given a bit of a discount so is there in the future a plan to maybe give direct holding to Quess’s business to your shareholders?A: I think Quess did extremely well in their public issue but that has not changed our stand in continuing as a majority shareholder in Quess and that will be the case in the foreseeable future. I don’t believe that we will either reduce or increase our shareholding in Quess at the present time. I am not aware of any conversations around this and my expectation is that we will continue at the present level.As far as the other organisations in the group, we have no intentions of going public in any of these organisations.